I’m actually taken aback a little by how I feel about 007 First Light, and usually I’m pretty lenient towards these movie‑type games. Let’s just say if the story and the presentation dazzle me (jingle keys!) with a semi-competent gameplay loop, I’m essentially sold. So, while 007 First Light sure has the presentation down, and most of the moment-to-moment action gameplay—I’m having a serious issue motivating myself to continue Bond’s adventure.
Something is off
It’s a mix of problems with one that surely sticks out: the quippy nature of all the characters. This nature of sarcastic, tensionless writing finally got to me for real—especially in a setting like Bond, where the protagonist is supposed to be anything else but. Bond has a witticism ready for almost everything, even for the most serious of situations. It becomes a tad much when the plot tries to be intense, but it’s completely unearned every time, as the game can’t leave one moment without a joke of some kind.
Bond isn’t even the only one with this superhumanly annoying ability, since everyone else is equipped with this weapon of mass destruction too. If that is not enough to leave the game as a narrative wasteland, everyone treats Bond as a child regardless of status in the agency. Prepare yourself to be talked down to as Bond, while they themselves put up a facade that nothing can or will bother them, ever. It all just feels fake and unbelievable, particularly so when the game forces a sequence of sadness even though you don’t feel a genuine care from anywhere. Everyone is a damn quip machine, and it drives me crazy—and they made Bond, even in youth, just too mundane. Suave? Not really, youthful charm of inexperience at best.
The other huge issue that also plays into this is that the game is incredibly boring in the segments that have you being guided around by a babysitter that is incapable of shutting up. This could have been sandbox-y, filled with gameplay—but no. It’s entirely scripted and requires very little of you. This could have been okay, I admit, if the writing was stellar. Alas, it’s not, and is instead, as I already hinted at, supremely grating on the soul.
I honestly don’t think I will be able to finish 007 First Light. The combo of a tensionless story, and braindead character writing proved to be just too much for me this time. Like now, I got to Vietnam in-game, and it’s just another walk-and-talk segment that will last for hours—while being under siege by the quip army. Oh, dear God. This must be the dud of the year for me so far, and I’m not even that big of a Bond fan, and even I feel something is seriously amiss here.
Thanks for reading.
– Thomas
Tom's Gaming Vault 